Been a little under the weather and swamped with writing assignments but just got inspired to share something with you. Hopefully, you will find it thought provoking and worth your time.
I just finished with the second module of a coaching program I’m taking – yes, even coaches need to keep learning. The module stressed the importance of knowing your strengths and building your business around them.
Each of us has unique strengths. Characteristics that set us apart. Talents that allow us to do certain things naturally, almost without effort. Few of us really know what our strengths are. Do you know yours? You need to.
That knowledge plays into your business’ evolution. Give me a few minutes to explain how my strengths play into my business’ future, and I think you’ll gain a clearer understanding of why you need to know your strengths.
I think my strengths are the ability to solve complex problems and the ability to figure out the motives of people. Solutions just pop into my head. I kid you not.
I could tell myself that my engineering training taught me how to solve problems systematically but that wouldn’t be the truth. I’ve always had the ability to understand the dynamics that affect outcomes and come up with approaches that produce the best possible results. This is especially true if people are involved in the problem.
It’s one of the reasons I enjoy helping contractors with their businesses. Few things in life are more complex than running a business and all businesses revolve around people. Helping owners figure out how to solve their pressing business and people problems fall right into my two strengths.
Here’s how this knowledge about myself affects my business.
I am committed to building a business that provides every type of assistance that a contractor might need. Since my strengths are in and of themselves insufficient to do that, I must recruit a team of individuals who possess the strengths I’m missing – the strengths that my business can not achieve it’s goal without.
In all honesty, what I am trying to do with my service is something few most coaches and consultants are willing to do. And one of the reasons is it takes a team of talented people to pull it off..
That’s the message I’m trying to get across to you – and I am probably doing a lousy job of it tonight.
If you are going to build a successful business – one that you can get away from, one that provides you with financial freedom – you must identify your strengths and use a team to fill in around them.
You should be positioned to concentrate your time on what you do best and have your team cover everything else.
Of course the first pressing question is “What are your strengths?”
How about a few tips on how to discover them?
1. Take a Kolbe A Index from www.kolbe.com ($50 +/-)
2. Take some form of DISC or Myers-Briggs communication profile.
3. Identify the tasks that you enjoy doing the most. These are probably tasks you mastered very quickly. That you can perform almost without effort.
4. Ask friends and family what they believe your three greatest strengths are.
By the way, it’s equally important to know what you’re not so good at.
I hate performing the same procedure over and over. I’m horrible at it. It bores me. So, when faced with a task that must be performed repeatedly, I have three options: find someone to do it for me, come up with a technological solution that is quick and painless, or find a way to make a game out of it. In the long run, I will always do better having someone else do it for me. As will you for your weaknesses.
One final piece of advice. Strengthen your strengths and work around your weaknesses. Trying to strengthen a weakness is a huge waste of time. You will never do the task better than someone for whom the task comes naturally.
Next topic: safety and what we do that undermines it.